Delayed Rays of a Star

by Amanda Lee Koe

  Topping the ridge, they sighted the stark cerulean repose of the Mediterranean Sea below them. The sea was so blue it took Walter’s breath away. It was a beautiful late-September morning. He’d written Adorno and Horkheimer drolly that even if a fossil piece like him survived the arduous journey with his diseased heart and sooty lungs, personally, he did not see the draw of being wheeled around and exhibited as “the last European” in America. Los Angeles is not America, Adorno had written back, it is Weimar under palm trees. Here the climate is wonderful, and you will do your best work.

  Walter had to concede—perhaps he had been wrong to dismiss wholesale the idea of a new life—he was looking forward to seeing his friends again. Coughing, he allowed himself to entertain the thought: If I reach Los Angeles in one piece, I’ll owe it to myself to quit smoking. A lone gull flew by, wingspan prodigious, and Walter felt his syncopated heart soar with it.

  * * *

  —

  AT THE FRENCH-SPANISH overland border, Walter, the photographer, and her son presented themselves to the authorities of Portbou. They were informed on the spot that without the relevant exit visa out of Vichy France, they were being denied entry into Francoist Spain, which had recently canceled all transit visas for German Jewish refugees. The provincial Spanish border police at Portbou had been briefed to expel any such persons as soon as reasonably possible back to Vichy French authorities, who would in turn rotate them on to their Nazi higher-ups.

  Don’t look at me that way, ma’am.

  We are just following protocol, and you do not possess the required paperwork. We reserve the right to refuse entry. It is regrettable, but consider it from our point of view. Surely it will be a problem for us if our country runs amok with Protestants, Jews, Freemasons, foreigners, Communists, homosexuals, and Romani.

  We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

  We will arrange a train carriage for your deportation in the morning. For an overnight stay, we recommend the Hostal França.

  * * *

  —

  THEY PAID UP front for their rooms.

  The Portbou police posted a sentry outside the motel.

  The photographer and her son shared a twin room. Walter asked for a single. The courteous Spanish abuela who kept the establishment spick-and-span showed him to room number 3. There was absolutely nothing to do. Walter deeply regretted not packing a book to read. Glancing at the heft of his unfinished manuscript in the suitcase, he thought it was unforgivably egotistical to have lugged these papers along. They should be burned at once. In any case, when was the last time he’d derived the scholarly satisfaction of a thesis smoothed over? He never had that luxury on the run. It was hard for him to believe that things had come to this, when he was just a man who liked to write and read. Each time he put on his round, thick spectacles and peered at the worn-out, rabbity reflection in the mirror, it made him want to laugh. This was the face of a man who was being hunted down by the secret police?

  He unpacked and repacked his suitcase, and started to shave.

  On the little vanity he arranged his shaving kit and the fifteen tablets of morphine he’d carried around with him ever since Hitler had been sworn in as chancellor, hidden not without ignoble mirth between his change of underwear. The tablets were eight years old, and he could only hope they had not lost their potency. Walter had asked the apothecary all those years ago: You are most certain this amount will suffice? If it came to it, he added, it would be best to err on the side of caution in this sort of matter, you understand. Sir, the apothecary assured him, it would do well enough to finish off a prizefighting bull.

  After shaving, Walter made sure his teeth and fingernails were clean.

  Before administering the lethal dose, he smashed his watch, so it would not distract its owner in his last hour with its faithful ticking. Crunching down on the watch face under his boot momentarily took the edge off everything. It gave Walter a good thrill, in equal parts sacrilegious and satisfying. As a small child, Walter recalled coming up to just the pendulum bob of an enormous Winterhalder & Hofmeier grandfather clock in the corner of his family’s antique shop. In order to better mask their wealth, his father had taken to saying he was only an antiques dealer, not a banker. The standing clock had a moon dial, and peering at the weights and cable pulleys visible through the beveled glass panels, Walter had had a magnificent view of the anagogic workings of time. Having now destroyed his timepiece, he could not be sure how much time had passed, but sometime later, recumbent on neat bed linen with the drug dribbling through his bloodstream, completely alone in a small town whose randomness bothered him more than its desolation, moving a shoulder and hearing the old creak of a loose spring in the mattress, Walter began to regret what he had done, but of course it was too late.

  He twitched.

  He was curious to know if the twitch was his own doing, or an effect of the morphine. It was hard to say. He reminded himself that at the bottom of it all, things were only mannequins. Everything was simply a matter of sooner or later, and at least this way, he would go by his own hand. If there was only a way to know how close he was to the end, he would have felt better. A blackish anxiety of losing control over his final thoughts was starting to slip over everything, and his breath began to shorten up into shallow, gasping intervals.

  It took Walter every last shred of his will to calm himself down, and re-create with exquisite precision the scent of his library. It smelled of pinecones and cinders, and called to mind two of his favorite things: coffee and rain. Looking through the book crates that had just arrived, Walter was surprised to see that his collection had been delivered in its entirety. All of them were in one place again. He’d forgotten he owned this volume. What to place next to that?

  I am unpacking my library, he thought. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood—it is certainly not an elegiac mood, but, rather, one of anticipation—

  The Malayan Orangutan Has the Key to the Basement of the Leipzig Zoo

  II

  Life is short but art is long. Leni chanted her scales outside a trailer high up in the Bavarian Alps. Ars longa, she articulated at different pitches, slightly out of breath, vita brevis. One more set of calisthenics to go—she was warming up her voice and body at the same time.

  Life is short but art is long, she panted, ars longa, vita brevis!

  Upon nailing her last jumping jack she bent over to touch her toes, taking a quiet moment for herself before the rush of the workday began. A director was the eye of the storm, a general who commandeered by example. Leni adhered to the same morning routine on shoot so she could ground herself for the unpredictable challenges ahead. Making a movie is just like being at war, she often told her crew. Another favorite proclamation of hers: How splendid this mountain air is! Such statements might have sounded glib, but they were intended, in good part, as reminders to her crew of how lucky they were to be working on her movie. Tiefland was about a young gypsy dancer torn between an innocent shepherd and a greedy marquis, a mountain movie that had nothing to do with reality. Down below, across Europe, it was all hair and teeth and eyes. The minimum conscription age was inching lower by the day, the maximum higher.

  If her crew didn’t pull their weight, she might have to let the incompetent ones go.

  Leni knew everyone in the safety net of her employ was trying to remain in her good graces for that reason, and she had to take their compliments with a pinch of salt, but even then, when they’d praised her performance in u
nison the day before, she was so pleased she didn’t need to pop a nighttime muscle relaxant to help her fall asleep.

  Tiefland is going to be gold, her assistant said. Martha is such a sympathetic character, and dare I say, Miss Riefenstahl, you’ve given her so much soul, she dances right off the screen!

  Blood still pumping from her exercise, Leni felt refreshed and ready this morning. She brushed her hair back and put on her trusty camel overcoat. Double-breasted and slimming when belted, it photographed wonderfully for production stills and never appeared to get dirty. Whenever she thrust it off, the assistant, who trailed behind Leni with a clipboard, a tumbler of water, and a jar of smelling salts, was expected to catch the coat before it touched the ground. Her bladder colic was better today, too. Though it was still thick and foul smelling, there was hardly any blood in her urine as she squatted in the outhouse they’d constructed at the back of their encampment. The pain, while troublesome, was manageable—she’d just received a fresh batch of methadone painkillers direct from the good people at IG Farben. Quality stuff, synthesized specially for field surgery on injured soldiers, it was not sold on the market. Morphine had been effective, but it made her drowsy. She could not afford to look woozy, not when she was both lead actress and director.

  In the large-scale documentaries she’d shot for the Party, there were as many as a few hundred men under Leni’s thumb, running around doing whatever she told them to. Line producers, cinematographers, unit managers, film loaders, assistant directors, sound grips, location scouts, script supervisors, lighting technicians, boom operators, crowd controllers. Everyone was waiting for Miss Riefenstahl to call action, say cut. She expected complete allegiance to her vision, and there were those who found her directing style too controlling.

  An older male cinematographer once walked off Leni’s set.

  In the middle of a take, she’d given him an exasperated look and gestured with a flurry of her hands that he was not moving fast enough to cover the action. Speed up, she mouthed. He turned to her, halting the production. With all due respect, Miss Riefenstahl, he said. If you have determined all my start and end points, as well as every last angle and the speed of the coverage, without including me in the discussion, overriding all my opinions, what room do I have to breathe?

  I don’t need you to breathe, she told him, I just need you to move the camera!

  Looking at his face she was afraid he was going to hit her, but with a quick glance around she felt confident he would not dare to do so in front of everyone, and went on unruffled: Look, if you listen to all I say, you know there is a good chance you will win a prize next year.

  I’d ride you below the crupper, bitch, the cinematographer said, only you’re too high-strung for anyone to have a good time.

  Men would mouth off without thinking twice about who they were crossing. Never having to fight for anything made them complacent and impulsive. She wanted to scream: You’re fired! But she bit this back just in time. No matter how firmly she’d planted her feet, any day she could have the carpet yanked out from under her—best to retain a sense of scale when your opponent was losing his—and now she sensed the crew’s sympathies tilting toward her. Why lose their favor just to have the last word? She dug her heels in. A vulnerable silence would serve her better. True enough, they came up to her after he left, asking if she was all right, offering her a hot drink. She shook her head and smiled bravely. Let’s go on with the scene, she said. When the crew relayed that story down the grapevine, there was, more or less, only one way it could end now: Miss Riefenstahl was a true professional.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN SHE RECEIVED the phone call from the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to inform her that Tiefland was green-lit, mute tears of relief slid down Leni’s cheeks, though over the line she preserved perfectly the clipped tone of official bureaucratese. Financing was in place and they were good to go once she submitted her crew list, and the Ministry had verified that everyone was in good blood standing. They would set up a date so she could sign the paperwork for the Doctor.

  Thank you, she said, I can’t wait to begin.

  Clicking the phone back onto the receiver, she did a victory jig around the table alone in her kitchen in Berlin—she intended to spend as long as she could on this movie, up in the mountains, far away from what was going on in the cities. As soon as she started sketching out ideas for Tiefland’s production design, the migraine that had been bothering her for months lifted. Everyone knew H favored her from the beginning, but what no one knew was how it had been growing much trickier to do what she wanted without putting the Party off. If she wanted the NSDAP to continue funding and prioritizing her projects, she had to remain relevant to them while making her own art.

  The best way to make use of someone is to make them think they are making use of you. H had a soft spot for her, and they could easily spark each other into a creative tizzy when speaking of an upcoming collaboration in abstract terms, thus clearing a wide berth for her: Of course she wanted to make Tiefland because the mountains were so resplendent, they reminded her of the Volk! A gift to the people, a return to the mystical, a tribute to the land. Yes, it looked like she might have to play Martha, the lead character, herself, since she’d once been a classical dancer—it would seem there was no Party-approved actress more suitable for the challenges of the role. How fantastic that her personal desires dovetailed with the Party’s vision for a new order. My aesthetic aspiration, your political intent. In different tongues we speak the same language, moving toward an unshakable purity for the future.

  As usual, the one with doubts was the Doctor.

  Yet another mountain movie? He steepled his fingers contemplatively. I do wonder—at this point, what would we do with one of those? You know we admire your movies, but we can only fund something that makes sense for us. I’m certain you understand?

  The Doctor saw right through her. She hated him for it.

  In another universe, she once entertained the disgusting thought for a second, they could have been good together: an ambitious duo who understood each other perfectly. Under current conditions, he was an obstacle poised to inconvenience her at every turn. Yet the Doctor could not stop her, as long as H was there to back her up. This was the sorest of points for the Doctor. In the beginning Leni had childishly flaunted it, but as soon as she saw that the Doctor’s resentment of her special closeness to H went beyond the professional, she knew better than to continue provoking him.

  As the Minister of Propaganda, not only did the Doctor control the purse strings for the arts and the budget of your production, he decided whether you and your work were German or un-German. Rub the Doctor the wrong way, and with one piece of paper and a rubber stamp, he could ensure with immediate effect that you would never work in this country again. He was the one who led the book burnings and the fire oaths: No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of the Weimar revisionist Thomas Mann, the milksop traitor Erich Maria Remarque, and the debauched foreigner Ernest Hemingway. Burn them all!

  * * *

  —

  EVERY NIGHT LENI prayed Germany would win the war.

  She prayed hard, not because she was a patriot, not because she was loyal to the Party, not because H could do no wrong, but because, honest-to-goodness, she did not want to go down with any of them. If they won, she might come up tops again. Was it really so wrong to want the best for yourself? She’d put all her eggs in one basket. Everything seemed so promising in their early years together—the economy had stabilized, the NSDAP was revered, her films were celebrated. Things were different now. These days, Leni never undressed fully before bed. It was safer to go to sleep with your clothes on. If something happened you could throw on a coat, lace up your boots, and run. Often in her dreams she was sprinting dry-mouthed with no end in
sight, but when she turned around there was no one behind her.

  Most mornings Leni woke frightened, but she could not show that troubled face to the crew, not when Tiefland felt like a plentiful commune protected by a spell: if one person broke down to ask why they were making an alpine movie about a shepherd and a dancer when the world around them had gone mad, everything would turn to dust—they would all be back in the city, queueing for rations and cowering in bunkers. That must not happen.

  She would be the magic pillar everyone leaned on.

  Swallowing the pills and supplements she needed to get through the day—light barbiturates for the anxiety, methadone for the bladder colic, St. John’s wort for everything else—Leni grabbed some breakfast from the cook’s tent and headed to the editing cabin. Reviewing the rushes that had been printed and prepared for her on the projector in the editing cabin this morning, she was not too pleased with what she saw. You can’t trust anyone’s eye other than your own—Leni thought her face looked stiff. There was not enough light on her as she entered, and more fog was required so that when the mountains (moments ago so artfully obscured) were revealed, the viewer could be lifted into their grandeur. Thankfully, all of this was remediable. They would reshoot the scene today—as many takes as were needed to achieve what she wanted.

  As long as they were here, hard at work on Tiefland, everything could seem all right.

  This was their world, not the one down below. Each morning Leni buzzed her scales, feeling the ticklish susurrations of her own voice and lips in her ears, on her cheeks. Life is short, she droned, art is long. Till the scales and words were just air vibrating through larynx, and there was no more doubt left, only the one clear objective: Ars longa—she was not responsible for anything else, other than making the best film she could—vita brevis.